by Hetzer, Paul
Lamar shook his corned-rowed head at the thought.
He peered in the rearview mirror at the assortment of vehicles lined up behind him. They’d be sitting ducks if the creepy-creeps come at them right now.
“Yo, Sis. Go back an’ tell dat nigga Crazy-8 git his ass up here,” Juicy-Juice ordered his sister Takeisha.
“I ain’ goin’ out dere!” she snapped back at him, crossing her arms across her ample bosom. She stared up at him in the mirror with her eyes just daring him to do something.
“I ain’ got time for dis shit.” He looked over at the man next to him. “2-Stroke, go git his ass up here.”
2-Stroke smiled at him darkly, displaying several gold-capped teeth, then grabbed his AK and opened the door to the Escalade, never taking his eyes off of Lamar. He slammed the door and walked back to the last vehicle, a bright red 2010 Ford F-250, and began talking with someone on the driver’s side. Lamar stared at him impatiently in the side view mirror.
“Dat niggah gon’ be trouble,” he snarled to himself.
2-Stroke returned and got back into the passenger seat without saying a word. Soon a lean and powerfully built black man was at Lamar’s window. The man was a decade younger than Lamar’s 32 years of age and had been a rising star in one of D.C.’s local street crews. Lamar had found him the day after the creepy-creeps had started running rampant and the man had become his right hand in this new crew. His face was mocha-colored, his brown eyes cool and hard. A horseshoe-shaped scar traced a keloid path from the corner of his left eye to the crook of his mouth, causing his face to appear lopsided when he smiled, which he rarely did.
“Sup, cuz?” Crazy-8 asked when Lamar put down the window.
“Ah need you take that rig of yours and push a path through that wreck,” Lamar ordered.
“You shittin’ me, cuz. That’ll bust up my ride.”
Lamar’s face turned purple with rage. “Jus do it, nigga, before dem creepy-creeps come down on our ass. You can git another ride anywhere, anytime!”
Crazy-8 walked back to his truck cursing to himself. 2-Stroke sat next to Lamar smiling a gold and white smile.
“Wut da fuck you smilin’ at?” Lamar snarled at him. He needed to get control of this dog before it bit him when he turned his back.
After a half hour the Ford had cleared enough of a path through the wreck that they were able to squeeze through and continue on their way down the clear westbound interstate.
They would often come across a group of creepy-creeps who would launch themselves at the vehicles like mad dogs. They were incredibly fast and strong. Still, the crew had more than enough firepower to deal with these small groups and would shoot them down like the crazed dogs they were before they could get too close. The further west they drove the whiter the faces of the creepy-creeps became and the less they saw of any brothers running with the crowds. Not that Lamar had a problem killing another Negro— creepy-creeps of any color were fair game. Lamar considered himself an equal opportunity killer, although he took a certain pleasure in killing any crackers he came across without having to worry about 5-0 coming after his ass.
This world belong to my peeps now. It ain’t the white man world no more.
They had a long way to go to get to his cousin’s house outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. He had last talked to him a couple of months back before the cell service disappeared. He was poor and didn’t have much, but it would be a place where he and his crew could chill.
“They gots-ta have food out dere in da country,” he had told his sister weeks ago.
Lamar and his sister had roamed the decimated city of Washington, D.C. at night while the creepy-creeps slept, slowly increasing their numbers one or two per day until he had built up a formidable crew. Unfortunately, almost half of his new crew were bitches, and the few brothers he had found didn’t have any real street experience. One sister they had picked up a couple of weeks into the shit who was riding back with Crazy-8 was so damn fat, but was turning into such a motherfucking stone cold killer that if she was white they’d be calling her Frosty the Snowman! He smiled to himself at the thought, showing his own gold. Sometimes they found survivors that didn’t want anything to do with their way of life, even though they were the only game in town surviving. Lamar couldn’t leave those types breathing and competing for the limited resources left in the hood. If prison had taught him anything, it was how to survive on limited means. The newcomers, whether they were the wet behind the ears newjacks or hardened gangbangers, each had to prove themselves to Lamar against the killer creepy-creeps, one way or another. There were plenty of gats around the Dirty City now lying around for the picking, and Lamar new where to look for them and find them. His crew became well armed with a wide assortment of firearms. The creepy-creeps better beware!
They had to finally leave Southeast D.C. after the creepy-creep hordes had become too large and the food supplies too low. Without the farms supplying food to the city, stocks disappeared rapidly. They decided to escape to the country where they would take whatever they needed from whoever got in their way. He had the back of the Escalade packed full of dope and guns. There had to be mothafuckers out there fiendin for a fix and willing to do anything fo it. Lamar had the shit, and that made him king for sure. He smiled to himself.
Dog, we be unstoppable!
The HEMTT was backed ass to the glass at the Kroger, although there wasn’t much glass left from where the truck had smashed its heavy bumper through the foyer windows and wall. The two men and the woman worked with a frenzied yet orderly speed, wheeling cart after cart of groceries to the rear of the vehicle where Shavers would manually heft the cart up and over the truck’s bed and dump the contents as quickly as possible into the growing pile of nonperishable food and supplies. It had turned out to be an untapped treasure trove of food. Unfortunately, now that the exterior was breached, it wouldn’t be long before the crazies found the place and tore through it like grasshoppers ravaging a cornfield. Between the utter rampant destruction that the creatures would leave behind, along with their contaminated feces, the place would become untenable for further scavenging. It was now or never to get what they needed from the dark, dusty shelves of this supermarket.
The Humvee sat with its motor idling in the center of the Kroger parking lot, Heinlich still in the driver’s seat, alertly looking methodically about him for any signs of enemy movement while Nantz nonchalantly made slow circling arcs with the .50-cal. on the roof of the vehicle. Carroll and Benton were in the grocery store helping McCully procure the food and supplies.
Heinlich glanced nervously down at his watch; fifteen minutes left before he was to give a short call to terminate the operation over the radio. He looked back up and to his right at the car-part distribution warehouse across the street. The large entryway double-doors were torn off their hinges and the dark interior beckoned like the black maw of a beast. It was a foreboding image that gave him the willies every time he glanced in that direction. He looked away from the warehouse with a cold shudder and trained his eyes up Statler Boulevard past a Staples store. It was that direction where they assumed the large horde that used the warehouse for a den had headed for their morning watering ritual at the old water-filled granite quarry. At the first sign of movement along that road he would yell the abort signal into the radio while Nantz would begin engaging and hopefully slow the approaching critters down long enough for them all to get out of Dodge.
“Dogwood Two. This is Gypsy Hill Base, over,” came Pickeral’s voice over his headset snapping him out of his reverie.
“This is Dogwood Two, go ahead,” Heinlich replied, never taking his eyes off of his surroundings.
Hmm-mm, he thought to himself at the sound of Charlotte Pickeral’s lovely voice. I’d love to be getting me some Pickeral about now instead of sitting here with an itchy ass and the heebie-jeebies.
“Requesting Sit-Rep, over.”
Heinlich glanced down at his watch again, ten minutes left. He replied
to her with the information, daydreaming of her soft, warm body with a whimsical smile stretching across his face.
“Roger Dogwood Two. Let us know when you’re Oscar Mike. This is Gypsy Hill Base out.”
He forced his mind away from the carnal images of the older woman and looked back up the boulevard again. Did his eye catch movement around the bend? He strained his eyes to see. Maybe a dog or something, he thought to himself. Thing was, there weren’t many dogs or cats left anymore. They had immediately become food for the two-legged critters.
“Nantz! Three o’clock. Anything?” he yelled back to the wiry private.
He saw Nantz swing around to the right and scan the area.
“I don’t see shit,” he called down.
A flock of blackbirds suddenly took to the air doing a synchronized ballet through the clear blue sky.
Something just didn’t feel right. He glanced at his watch again. Two minutes. “I should call it now,” he quietly said to himself, squinting his eyes trying to see further up around the road’s curve.
“Anything, Nantz?” he called out again to the gunner.
“If I saw anything, Sergeant, you’d be the first to know.” Heinlich shook his head at the disrespectful tone. He would have to have a little talk with Nantz later about his military decorum.
He looked at his watch. Time!
“Dogwood One, this is Dogwood Two. Time to bug out.”
After a moment he heard Shavers’ deep baritone voice over the radio reply that they were wrapping it up. He glanced over at the Kroger and saw one last buggy of groceries being thrown over the top of the truck’s bed and the rest abandoned as Carroll and Benton beat feet for the Humvee. Shavers jumped down off of the rear of the truck and raced to the cab while Red Beard McCully climbed in the passenger side.
“The sooner we pop smoke the better I’m gonna feel!” Heinlich yelled back to Nantz. He jammed the Humvee into gear and raced forward to meet Benton and Carroll.
Without warning, the loud booming of the M2 opening up on top of the Humvee split the silence.
He heard Nantz yelling over the radio. “Contact! Contact! Ten o’clock!”
The fifty continued to thump out its deep staccato beat as Heinlich glanced to his left at the trees that separated the parking lot from Lee Highway.
His eyes nearly bulged out of his head. It was like a cold, dark tidal wave breaking through and around the trees. It was a massive swarm and they were racing with their adrenaline-fueled distance-eating gait in a rolling wave of death right at the squad. He squealed the tires to a stop beside Carroll and Benton and they threw open the doors and dove into the vehicle, slamming the heavy doors shut behind them. He glimpsed the slow-moving HEMTT pulling away from the Kroger about fifty meters from his position as he spun the wheel and pointed the nose of the Humvee toward the boulevard.
The M2 rattled the vehicle with its sustained fire and was now joined by the lighter sounds of Carroll’s and Benton’s M4s firing through the Humvee’s open windows.
The big eight-wheeled truck was too slow pulling away from the storefront and the wave of crazies slammed into it with the force of a herd of buffalo. The mass of bodies swarmed into it like a single entity and Heinlich watched in horror through his side mirror as the truck actually came up on its side wheels with the force of the impact. The truck sustained its forward momentum, the giant tires climbing up and over bodies that piled beneath it, crushing them to a gelatinous pulp. Once the starboard wheels left the ground the accumulating bodies of the crazies caught beneath it acted as ramp while the vehicle careened forward, canting closer and closer to the tipping point.
Shavers must have hit the brakes and the truck slammed to a halt before its center of gravity shifted too far over and it sat rocking precariously on four wheels before falling back onto all eight, still canted as if on the side of a hill, which it was; a hill of bodies both alive and dead. Like a giant colony of ants the horde swarmed up and over the vehicle until it was completely covered in a squirming throng of bodies.
“Dogwood One! Dogwood One! Do you copy, over?” Heinlich screamed into the mic, his gravelly voice breaking from the stress.
There was only static as a reply.
Then the radio came to life and he heard Pickeral’s distressed voice asking for another situation report. The Humvee bounced over the parking lot divide away from the monstrous swarm and raced across the grassy knoll that divided the boulevard from the lot.
“Gypsy Hill Base, this is Dogwood Two, we have a situation!” he screamed into his headset, struggling to control the Humvee while it went airborne from the sidewalk and hit the southbound lanes of the boulevard. “We are in contact with a large force of hostiles! Shavers and McCully’s Hemmitt is overrun!” he yelled into the radio mic, watching the remaining swarm chasing after them like a solid living blanket.
“We gotta go back and get the First Sergeant!” screamed Carroll as he did a quick magazine change.
“Look back at that shit!” he yelled while gunning the vehicle down the road. “I don’t think there is a First Sergeant left to get!”
Where the truck had been was a large blob of writhing, roiling creatures. They s filled the parking lot from end to end and then as one the expanse of mad, raving creatures shifted direction in a fluid motion like the flock of birds he had spied moments ago, and followed the escaping Humvee, flowing around and over the lump where the HEMTT sat like a boulder in a raging stream.
“Dogwood two, this is Gypsy Hill base, do you request the release of Gypsy Hill mobile?” he heard Charlotte Pickeral asking over his headset. Gypsy Hill mobile was the tag they had given to the standby Stryker for this mission.
“Oh shit!” he cried out before he had a chance to reply to Pickeral. Ahead of him and racing toward them through the fields and trees that lined the boulevard less than a klick to the north was another swarm.
“Tangoes at our twelve!” he called out to his passengers then keyed the mic for the comms. “Gypsy Hill Base, this is Dogwood Two, send in Gypsy Hill Mobile. Have them rendezvous at the staging area!” he yelled over the hammering and staccato blasts of all the rifles as the Humvee ground to a halt. “Gypsy Hill, we have two OPFORS. One at Statler Square moving north, the other southbound on Statler Boulevard. Estimate over three thousand hostiles total.” He had no idea how close his guess was to reality. However, he would have been horrified to know that he had underestimated by half that number.
He glanced at Carroll on the passenger side of the Humvee. “How many 40 Mike-Mikes you got?”
“Six,” Carroll replied curtly, emptying another magazine out his window at the new threat approaching from the north.
“Benton, how many 40s?” he yelled out over the ear-crushing sound of the .50 to the woman in the rear passenger seat.
“Dozen.”
“Use the 2-0-3s to clear me a path through the field at ten o’clock!” He pointed through the windshield to the scrubby, dry field that part of the swarm was transiting in a cloud of dust as it broke for the road.
“Roger that, Sergeant!” Carroll broke open the M203 grenade launcher that hung beneath his M4 rifle and shoved what looked like an oversize shotgun shell with a conical nose into the breach and snapped it shut. When he squeezed the trigger there was a pop as the high-explosive round fired from the tube and sailed toward its target. It hit among the vanguard of advancing crazies and detonated with a window rattling explosion. A half-dozen of the creatures were practically vaporized in the blast. Soon another round left Benton’s 203 and exploded in the midst of the swarm, flattening a wide swath of them with the explosive shockwave.
“Sergeant, we gotta move!” Nantz screamed down at him as he paused the smoking M2.
Heinlich looked into his side mirror exactly when the first of the chasing crazies leaped like a wild beast onto the back of the Humvee. Without hesitation he jammed the accelerator to the floorboards and the Humvee leaped forward, throwing off the crazy man as the sentient flood
of creatures chasing them reached the spot where they had been sitting a second ago and bounded over the fallen crazy, swallowing him in a sea of madness.
The Humvee sped forward toward the smaller advancing swarm. The smoky thumps of the detonations of the HE rounds from the M203 blew a path through the thick mass of growling, screaming, semi-human creatures. The Humvee hit the curb and bounced into the air hard enough to just about eject Nantz from his position on top of the vehicle. They came down hard onto the dry field littered with scrub brush and dead crazies and shot onward into the path cleared by the grenades. Nantz paused from firing on the swarm behind him long enough to reach down and buckle in his gunner’s belt to the shackle on the hatch, then resumed his job of blowing apart the targets following them. Though they were easy to hit, it was like firing on an avalanche; it didn’t even slow down the rolling mass.
They sped through the path that the explosives had cleared through the swarm, flying by crazies stunned or injured by the explosions.
“I’m out!” Carroll reported as he fired his last HE round. He switched to his M4 on three-round bursts, taking out any crazies trying to regain their feet. Heinlich saw the trailing edge of the swarm less than fifty meters ahead.
All around them the horde closed in.
“Down to three!” Benton yelled as she leaned out and fired another round into the mass of creatures in front of them. It slammed into the chest of a fat, naked woman and exploded in a red cloud of vaporized blood and flesh, clearing another ten meter circle in the throng of encroaching bodies.
Benton fired off her last three HE rounds in rapid succession, opening a bloody route through the remaining creatures that were still rushing in on the vehicle. The Humvee bounced over the torn and mutilated bodies before punching through the last of the crazies bounding like enraged animals toward them, the vehicle’s armored bumper smashing them aside with bone crushing thuds. They shot clear of the swarm and raced recklessly across the remainder of the field, through some stunted trees and out onto the hardball of Route 250, an east-west corridor through the city.